Walrein (QC 3/3) [GP 4/4]

Visual Media Head

<p>Walrein's niche in UU stems from its decent bulk and access to great passive recovery in hail via Ice Body. With support from Snow Warning, Walrein restores 1/8 of its health every turn and can use Protect to gain back 1/4 of its health before the opposing Pokemon can even land a hit. Walrein's good bulk allows it to force out weak attackers, giving it plenty of chances to set up a Substitute and then easily recover the HP lost. Its Special Attack is decent enough to be useful, and its STAB Blizzard deals a fair amount of damage. However, its Water / Ice typing leaves it vulnerable to Electric- and Fighting-type attacks, both of which are common in UU. It also has a weakness to all forms of entry hazards, especially Stealth Rock. Even so, Walrein has the potential to pull its weigh on hail teams.</p>

<p>This set aims to become a bulky threat by taking advantage of Walrein's good defenses and decent Special Attack. When Protect and Substitute are combined with passive recovery from Leftovers and Ice Body, Walrein almost always takes no net damage while the opponent steadily loses health to hail. Walrein usually starts out by switching in against something it can force out with its good bulk and powerful STAB Blizzard. It then uses Substitute as the opponent switches and recovers a total of 12.5% of its health due to Leftovers and Ice Body. Finally, it uses Protect, regaining another 12.5% and thus fully restoring the health it used to construct the Substitute. If the opponent succeeds in breaking the Substitute the following turn, Walrein just constructs a new one while waiting for the passive damage from hail to build. Blizzard deals heavy damage to many Pokemon immune to Toxic Spikes, such as Crobat, Nidoqueen, Nidoking, Roserade, and Zapdos. Surf hits Steel-types for more damage and has much more PP, allowing Walrein a better chance of coming out on top against Steel-types that carry Leftovers. Roar allows Walrein to phaze setup attackers and deal more passive damage through previously deployed entry hazards, but Toxic is also a good option, as it eases reliance on Toxic Spikes support by allowing Walrein to poison opponents itself.</p>

[ADDITIONAL COMMENTS]

<p>The EV spread gives Walrein enough Speed to outpace 0 Speed Blastoise, which allows Walrein to phaze Blastoise with Roar before Blastoise can phaze it first. The HP EVs ensure Walrein's Substitutes can always take a Night Shade or Seismic Toss and that the Substitute and Protect combination always fully recovers its HP. The rest is invested in Defense, as physical attacks don't often hit Water-types for super effective damage. Alternatively, Walrein can run a faster spread of 232 HP / 108 Def / 168 Spe to outpace and phaze Suicune with Roar. It can also run a Special Defense spread of 232 HP / 36 Def / 216 SpD / 4 Spe with a Calm nature that can set up on Choice Specs Chandelure and Raikou as long as Toxic Spikes are on the field, and also outpaces minimum Speed Umbreon. Abomasnow is a vital teammate, as hail is crucial to this set's success. Walrein enjoys Toxic Spikes support, as its strategy involves stacking passive damage. Nidoqueen and Roserade are both great choices for setting up Toxic Spikes due to their ability to cover Walrein's weaknesses. The former can tank Fighting- and Electric-type attacks while the latter is strong against Electric- and Grass-types. Because Walrein is weak to all forms of entry hazards, it appreciates the help of a Rapid Spin user. Blastoise is the best Rapid Spin user in UU, but it shares two weaknesses with Walrein. Claydol, while an inferior Rapid Spin user overall, can tank Fighting- and Electric-type attacks.</p>

[Other Options]

<p>Choice Specs takes advantage of Walrein's decent Special Attack, but it is outclassed in this regard by Glaceon. Thick Fat can be used to give Walrein a resistance to Fire-type attacks, but then it cannot take advantage of all the passive recovery. Walrein has other interesting support moves such as Encore and Yawn, but it has a hard time fitting them into a set.</p>

[Checks and Counters]

<p>Cinccino and Rhyperior can use Rock Blast to break Walrein's Substitute and damage it, but both take heavy damage from Blizzard. Bisharp with Leftovers can set up on Walrein while avoiding poison, negating hail damage, and resisting Blizzard. Cobalion can also do this while threatening it with a super effective Close Combat, but it must be wary of the Special Defense drops, as Blizzard can then weaken it. No Steel-type directly fears Walrein; however, they can potentially be phazed by Roar and stalled by the combination of Walrein's great bulk, Protect, Substitute, and hail damage. Bulky Shed Skin Scrafty can set up Bulk Up, heal status conditions, and hit Walrein for super effective damage with its Fighting-type STAB. SubRoost Zapdos can PP Stall Walrein out of Blizzard and heal hail damage with Roost. Entry hazards make Walrein unable to take powerful attacks such as Darmanitan's Flare Blitz and Flygon's Outrage. Defensive teams have an easier time against Walrein. Hail damage and Toxic don't scare Umbreon, as it can heal status and HP with Heal Bell and Wish, respectively. Suicune has Leftovers to negate hail damage, takes virtually nothing from Blizzard, heals Toxic with Rest, and can force out Walrein with Roar before Walrein can recover its health. RestTalk Snorlax, while rare, takes little from Blizzard and can phaze with Whirlwind, but loses to Walrein if both phaze at the same time.</p>

Nice job! I hope I can be of help.
For starters, change the EV spread to outspeed minimum Speed Gligar and Suicune. On most defensive Pokemon, you usually first max out HP and then the defense of choice. I'd advice you to change the spread to 252 HP / 96 SpD / 160 Spe Calm, since it accomplishes the same the 220 HP EVs do (I think, you can ask for more input on it anyway). Mention that outspeeding Suicune is important to Roar it before it Roars you out, if you're opting for Toxic then you can go max/max or use the same spread to KO Gligar before it does anything, which I don't know if it's really important.
Remove the Toxic Spikes mention in Set Comments, that's the kind of things AC is for, where you already mentioned it. Instead, mention the perks of Roar and Toxic, such as adding up hazard damage, and being able to stall Pokes one v. one in Toxic's case.

220 hp is the only amount of hp walrein should be running imo because it yields 416 hp. this is the only number above 403 (for 101 subs) that is divisible by 16 (so ice body+leftovers heals exactly 1/8th per turn) otherwise rounding would make you lose 2 hp per sub+protect cycle.

also because walrien has significantly higher hp than defenses he is one of those unique pokemon where maximum balanced bulk does not come from fully investing in hp. kind of like how its a bad idea to max out hp and atack on cb snorlax because it could get more overall defense by divying up its evs among its defenses and hp (idk the exact spread).

Frankly I dont want to put either super fang or Toxic on the set but it waaaassss standard at one point iirc. Blizzard just is really good with stab and moderately high special attack and hits everything toxic spikes can't hit which should be used with Walrien about 90% of the time.

Also can I name this set Substitute+Protect because stallrein isn't particularly descriptive and if I have my way with this it wont even have toxic in its moveset. Subsitute+protect is much more descriptive because thats exactly what Walrien will be doing 90% of the time.

actually i think i might take out 4spdef evs to put them in speed to outspeed max modest gothorita (which you can then stall out instead of being mauled) while still beating suicune without technically creeping. yes gothorita isn't important but its a good excuse to creep on suicune which is extraordinarily important C:

Also can I name this set Substitute+Protect because stallrein isn't particularly descriptive and if I have my way with this it wont even have toxic in its moveset. Subsitute+protect is much more descriptive because thats exactly what Walrien will be doing 90% of the time.

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Stallrein is one of those long-standing community-born names that I'd personally like to see stay, I daresay everybody that has ever used this set knows it by that name

good analysis, well done, i don't have any nitpicks for once. I probably wouldn't bother giving Toxic a slash since Roar is absolutely crucial and since this set should really be used with Toxic Spikes support you'll only really be using Toxic on floaty things, the majority of which take fatal damage from Blizzard (Flygon, Zapdos etc) or are immune to Toxic anyway (Bronzong, Crobat etc).

Would maybe mention the use of something that can remove Roserade because she'll just keep removing your T-Spikes if you don't. A decent Pursuit user or Scarf Psyshock Gothorita idk

I know what the EVs accomplished (that's why I suggested 252 HP, which made you take more damage from hazards, and not 248), I just figured if you were gonna run 220 HP you could easily run 252 HP and take physical hits a bit better in return. I get your point on not maxing out HP on things that have naturally high HP, though.

also because walrien has significantly higher hp than defenses he is one of those unique pokemon where maximum balanced bulk does not come from fully investing in hp. kind of like how its a bad idea to max out hp and atack on cb snorlax because it could get more overall defense by divying up its evs among its defenses and hp (idk the exact spread).

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The HP to defense gap is actually not big enough for this to actually be true - Max HP does actually help maximize overall bulk.

This is the spread I use 252 HP / 96 Def / 52 SpD / 108 Spe; Bold Nature. This maximizes bulk with a slight emphasis on physical defense (55% Physical). It has enough Speed to beat min Spe Blastoise, which is enough, imho. Trying for Suicune's speed tier is just a bit excessive.

I can vouch for Toxic's effectiveness; it makes Walrein a lot more self-efficient and less hazard-dependent. Understandably Roar is the superior choice, since it can wear down the likes of Rest Talk Lax, CroCune, and Umbreon much more readily if the hazards are down.

I actually am not sure what maximizes bulk anymore but as I put in my posts the main point of running 220 HP EVs was the fact it it yielded no net damage after sub+protect whereas any other spread with over 403 hp would. So 220 EVs I believe is the only way not to slowly lose health. I will take away the point where I say it maximizes bulk if it actually doesn't. However looking at generation 4's analysis for the first time today advised running 232 HP EVs because that would still leave no net damage over subprotect, I will test that out to see if that still holds true for gen5. If it does and if thats the highest amount of HP that yields no net damage then I will be using 232 HP with those extra 12 HP evs coming from spdef. pocket that defense resource looks really cool but even if you put no bias to defense it does give you a slight bias to spdef doesn't it? Which is why I question how reliable it is. Assume for a moment that we are using 176 speed so 176 evs are off limits. If you use the rest for 252 hp and 80 def with a calm nature (424/236/237) compared with 220 hp 96 def 16spd with a calm nature (416/240/242) and put those spreads in honko's calc you will notice that my spread takes less damage from everything except of course stoss and night shades in uu which you set up on anyways.

Unless ofc QC requests me to use less speed. Frankly I think that would be foolish because outspeeding Gligar is of extreme important it will either let you get a sub up (over toxic) or it will let you blizzard your opp to death so they have 0 chance to set up sr. or it lets you kill them before they fire off a taunt. You also beat Suicune which is important because you can sub against the scald to negate any burn chance. In any case if you are aiming to beat only blastoise you might as well beat milotic too which is only 3 base speed points higher.

Toxic does make Walrein self-efficient (sufficient???) but frankly Walrein's only place is on hail stall where it shouldn't be self efficient. i will test out Toxic again and see just how good it is.

Ok the set name will be stallrein I guess.

Lastly a pretty major change, should I keep the general ev spread or should I shift the spdef to def? I am aware we have little tweaks here and there for speed and hp but thats minor compared to where we want to concentrate our defenses. I am sure a physically defensive set would work too and even a set that evenly distributes defenses.

this is all technical stuff which Walrein has a lot of because of its set and why I wasn't sure if I should do him for my first analysis. But i still think I am correct.

Max Hp is indeed divisble by 8 but NOT 16. Do you get what i'm getting at? Lefties and ice body heals oly 1/16 of your health rounded DOWN. Now do you see where I am going? Therefore with max hp you would heal 26 hp each turn from lefties and 26 each turn from ice body for a total of 52 hp per turn. you do this twice since you have protect and sub which yields 104 hp. heres the problem though, a sub costs 1/4 of your health. 1/4 of your max 424 hp is exactly 106 hp which is 2 more than what you get. so 104-106=a net loss of 2 hp per cycle.

this is opposed to my spread which has exactly 416 hp with 220 evs. 1/16 of that is exactly 26 which times 2 for ice body and leftovers is 52 again times 2 again since you use protect and sub is 104. the exact same??? but look carefully when you use sub you still lose 1/4 which translates to 104 hp...no net loss! this saves you 1 hp every turn of sub protect.

You forgot one thing about your spread calcs...you didn't give me a bold nature! With bold I only take 65.38 - 76.92% from superpower as opposed to your max hp set which takes 66.5 - 78.77% from the same superpower. Not a big difference but certainly if my set is bulkier AND yields no net sub protect damage i think the case is clear.

Well, now that that's cleared, you should know that 232 HP is better then. Why? Because it gets no net loss from HP and it takes less SR damage, while being veeery slightly bulkier.
Since Substitute damage is rounded down, here's what happens:
Turn 1:Walrein used Substitute! Walrein lost 25% of its health (419/4=104 HP)
It restored a little health using its Leftovers! (419/16=26 HP) Walrein's Ice Body heals it! (419/16=26 HP)
After one turn, Walrein has 419-104+26+26=367 HP
Turn 2: Walrein used Protect! It protected itself
It restored a little health using its Leftovers! (419/16=26 HP) Walrein's Ice Body heals it! (419/16=26 HP)
So after two turns, it still regains its health completely due to Subtitute's HP loss being rounded down too, while taking less damage from SR (or the same damage, but a lower percentage of its max HP).

I'm sorry I didn't recognize my mistake in the previous post, I got confused because you said 1/8 when you were accounting for full recovery.

hilarious, I only used Calm for yours, because that's the nature you provided it in your example.

OK, that makes sense - I provided a spread with 220 HP for that case.

The fact that your spread has more physical bulk (which not really, because it's the same exact spread as I suggested with 220 HP) only means that y(our) spread has a higher emphasis than my original 55% emphasis on physical bulk. Nothing wrong with X-act's Defensive Applet. You would know if you knew the user who created it ;o

Oh, making the parentheses Toxic Stall was just a random thought, it wasn't conducive to what the actual set name should be. Toxic isn't even the first slash! Just make the set name as Stallrein without any parentheses, people will know what you're talking about.

EDIT: oh and some tips for the analysis:

The set comments needs to talk about more. You have this:

Walrien can take advantage of all of its assets including high defenses and good Special Attack.

In hail constantly using Protect and then Substitute leads to no net damage for Walrien while the opponent must take hail damage as well as any other residual damage that you have set up.

Blizzard badly damages almost everything that is unaffaected by Toxic Spikes, which you should be using in conjunction with this set, including OHKOing Nidoking, offensive Roserade and even offensive Zapdos if you managed to put up Stealth Rock.

There's a lot more to say in set comments. You should explain what Roar and Toxic are good for and when to use them over each other. You should explain why one might use Super Fang over Blizzard. You should explain how you use Walrein (i.e. how you can get it into play, what you actually do when it's in play). Also, seconding what Lee said, Toxic doesn't need a slash.

AC wants more specific partners. Think of a Roserade mention for Toxic Spikes. It can take Grass- and Electric-type attacks that severely hurt Walrein and can use Sleep Powder to give Walrein free switch-in opportunities. Walrein has trouble with Fighting-types such as Heracross, Mienshao, and Scrafty, so you'll want to give Crobat, Mew, and Cofagrigus a mention. Maybe Heracross too. Hazards are annoying for Walrein, even with Ice Body. It might have to actually take a hit when it comes in, and especially if it has to switch in and out, that damage is going to pile up. Claydol is pretty good due to its Fighting resistance, but it's also not the best Pokemon, so Bulkytop should be thrown in their as well. Claydol can also set up Stealth Rock. You mention Nidoqueen for Stealth Rock, but there's a few more Pokemon you could talk about; namely, Cobalion (can take Grass-type attacks) and Gligar (can take Fighting- and Electric-type attacks). Put how Pokemon such as Nidoking and Flygon can clean up teams weakened by Walrein's antics.

I will wait for QC to decide what ev spread although i am pretty much convinced 232 hp is optimal.

i dont expect super fang to be here for long (honestly it only hits a handful of steels and they have to be dumb to slowly let themselves get ko'd by it). you miss out on way too much (ZAPDOOOOSSSS)

I dont understand why you want me to talk about Toxic in set comments but you also dont't want it to be in the set.

i added Roserade and mentioned how she can set up toxic Spikes absorb grass moves but I think the sleep powder thing isn't worth a mention since a sleeping poke isn't going to stay in 9 times out of 10 in my experience so walrein doesn't ever get that free set up.

Walrein only has trouble with fighting mons if he hasn't set up yet otherwise he handily beats them all except bu scrafty which can't even 2hko walrein iirc. I dont feel a need to add even more partners to cover the fighting weakness when a team in general already should cover these threats. Its like saying "rayquaza is sd normal arceus weak so have a way to cover that for your team" well duh every team should have a sd arceus counter in ubers (i do play ubers its fun C:) or it will destroy you.

i added the Rapid spin mention although i have yet to decide what the spinner should be...claydol and hitmontop are like mediocre at best while Blastoise is a good spinner for hail stall i find but for the purposes of this analysis (a walrein analysis not a hail stall analysis) it doesn't work terribly well with Walrein.

I guess Gligar and Cobalion make sense to set up SR they just never really stood out to me as good partners, just random sr users.

I might mention the offensive late game cleaners but I stressed several times how this was supposed to be on hail stall only where you won't see many of these attackers. And Nidoking won't go too well if you use Nidoqueen I am guessing (although who knows).

Good analysis chief, but i'm not quite set on the EVs; mores specifically the Speed evs. What's the point of running that much Speed for Gligar? It usually runs much more speed than that (at least 54 evs from experience, which is enough to outspeed Jolly Victini. And if it doesn't, it should!). And why are you trying to beat Suicune? It's offensive sets are always going to be faster, CroCune doesn't use Roar, so that menas you really only have to worry about the Restalk set that isn't all that much common (27% of Suicunes ran Roar in November). If we do run enough speed to min speed Suicune, Restalk Suicune users are just going to run 4 more Speed evs... which is textbook Speed creeping.

In case you were wondering, speed creeping is acceptable on something like Skarmory, who only needs to run like 24 Speed EVs to outrun all variants of Wobbuffet, but it's a no go on something as slow as Walrein. If we allow the analysis to go onsite as is, it'll just cause players to run 12 Speed on Suicune / Gligar, and then Walrein players will compensate with more Speed, etc etc. I feel like a good speed benchmark is Blastoise, who is significantly more common than Suicune and it doesn't cost much Speed EVs to get the jump on Blastoise.

I'm thinking of using 220 HP / 96 Def / 28 SpD / 164 Spe or any of the spreads that safely put you out of speed creeping range. Thoughts?

PK, min speed and max speed are the two benchmarks that you're allowed to aim for without it being speed creep. Aiming to beat 0 Spe _____ is not speed creep, but aiming to beat 4 Spe _____ or 8 Spe _____ or 168 Spe _____ is. If someone suggests a Suicune spread running 4 more Spe EVs to beat this particular Walrein, THAT would be speed creep, and you should reject that, but if Walrein vs defensive Suicune is an important matchup, what you do is have Walrein's EV spread aim to beat min Speed Suicune, and then in the writeup say something to the effect of "This spread outspeeds minimum Speed Suicune, but Suicune may run a bit of speed, so adding a few more Speed EVs might be helpful to guarantee you outspeed it."

Good point, and thanks for the clarification. That said, I don't feel like Suicune is worth beating, and you're definitely not going to beat Gligar anytime soon. I think aiming for Blastoise would be ideal.

i would still have to use less speed evs because my set aims to beat 8 speed suicune so i believe i should be removing 8 speed evs and placing them into defense. the majority of gligar run less than 8 speed by the way, very few on the ladder run 52 (and i really never heard of running 52 speed on gligar until you said so). aiming for blastoise is still not a bad idea but if you go for blastoise i would be tempted to add just a tad more to beat milotic (so she cannot toxic you) and then by then i feel like i should go all the way up to suicune again.

the thing about walrein is that all he asks for is one chance to set up - just one - and by then if the conditions are right he can sap, easily, 100 or 200 or 300 or even more percents worth of damage. and unlike sweepers doing that much damage that damage is pretty much guaranteed. by investing more in speed you allow more chances to set up which means more chances to inflict large damage.

you still can set up on relatively strong attacks like flygon's outrage or an psychic from azelf while no matter how much you invest in defense you won't be able to take the obscenely strong ones (like lo darmanitan). there is nothing specific the extra defense evs gives to you while there are useful things investing in speed does for you.

i would still have to use less speed evs because my set aims to beat 8 speed suicune so i believe i should be removing 8 speed evs and placing them into defense. the majority of gligar run less than 8 speed by the way, very few on the ladder run 52 (and i really never heard of running 52 speed on gligar until you said so). aiming for blastoise is still not a bad idea but if you go for blastoise i would be tempted to add just a tad more to beat milotic (so she cannot toxic you) and then by then i feel like i should go all the way up to suicune again.

the thing about walrein is that all he asks for is one chance to set up - just one - and by then if the conditions are right he can sap, easily, 100 or 200 or 300 or even more percents worth of damage. and unlike sweepers doing that much damage that damage is pretty much guaranteed. by investing more in speed you allow more chances to set up which means more chances to inflict large damage.

you still can set up on relatively strong attacks like flygon's outrage or an psychic from azelf while no matter how much you invest in defense you won't be able to take the obscenely strong ones (like lo darmanitan). there is nothing specific the extra defense evs gives to you while there are useful things investing in speed does for you.

STAB Blizzard is super nice for discouraging Roserade / Shaymin (both of whom are no more than mildly inconvenienced by an Ice Beam from something like offensive Cune), but Super Fang is what makes this set so great. Think about what kind of Pokemon generally stop an offensive Water-type - other water types, generic special walls, grass types. And now realize that Walrein has very few problems with those because of Super Fang. Super Fang takes any defensive potential counters to 44% health immediately - Umbreon faces a high chance of being KO'd with Super Fang -> Blizzard in hail conditions, for example. And the cool part is, Ice Body really helps with offsetting Life Orb recoil.

Super Fang takes any defensive potential counters to 44% health immediately - Umbreon faces a high chance of being KO'd with Super Fang -> Blizzard in hail conditions, for example.

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Two things. First, it would bring a Pokemon with Leftovers down to 50% after they healed, such as Umbreon. Second, in almost any scenario, if Super Fang followed by another move KOs, then two of the same move would also KO, or at least certainly get close. When you factor in that Walrein does less damage than other special attackers with Water and Ice moves, he falls out of favor completely. Since Blizzard does 40% max, Umbreon would be left with 10% health with no hazards, which means it survives Hail.

Second, in almost any scenario, if Super Fang followed by another move KOs, then two of the same move would also KO, or at least certainly get close.

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"Certainly get close" is not the same thing at all when you're dealing with walls that have instant recovery, like Umbreon or those weird defensive Slowkings - your chance of 2hkoing goes from fairly high to non-existent.

Additionally, f your opponent has both a bulky water and, say, Umbreon, Super Fang is a MUCH safer move than Blizzard, because it guarantees the KO on both.

And finally, if your opponent brings in Snorlax and uses rest, you actually 3hko with Super Fang -> Surf x 2 100% of the time.

When you factor in that Walrein does less damage than other special attackers with Water and Ice moves, he falls out of favor completely.

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What special attackers would these be? Offensively, I can only think of Suicune, Empoleon, and the occasional Milotic / Simipour. Maybe a specs slowbro, but that has completely different coverage and other disadvantages (like that base 30 speed). None of these Pokemon have STAB Ice moves, certainly not one as strong as Blizzard, meaning that Shaymin and Roserade can all come in and threaten with powerful Grass attacks (which offensive Empoleon still very much cares about).